


Improbability Welcomes Wary Travelers.

by TayBartlett9000



Series: The Hitchhiker's guide to the Disc World. [1]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Genre: Discworld - Freeform, Friendship, Humour, Improbability, Improbability Drive, M/M, Magic, Space Adventure, galaxy, major character death [almost], space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-11-01 05:52:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17861558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TayBartlett9000/pseuds/TayBartlett9000
Summary: As Rincewind and  Twoflower fall off the edge of the Disc world, they are miraculously rescued by the  only ship in existance that has on board an improbability drive. The wizard and the tourist will soon come upon Ford Prefect, Arthur Dent and the rest of the Heart of Gold's crew.





	Improbability Welcomes Wary Travelers.

Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent were sitting side by side on the bridge of the Heart of Gold, each gazing out of opposite windows and musing over  the puzzling events of the previous afternoon. It had all been a bit hecktick, a bit too hecktick in Arthur Dent’s humble opinion. Even Ford, who was used to living on the more dangerous side of life had found the day’s events  more than harrowing. Ford had seen many a battle between space pirates and galactic policemen. He himself had narrowly escaped the galactic police force numerous times. But never before had he been on the receiving end of a barrage of gunfire. Not only that, he had never been hiding from a galactic policeman who claimed he wrote poetry for a living. The two occupations just didn’t seem to fit together in his mind.

Presently, Arthur decided he would break the few moments of silence that had  descended over the ship. “I never, ever want to go through any of that again,” he said meaningfully, leaning back and gazing at a pot plant that stood randomly in the middle of the room. He sighed heavily and glanced at his galaxy trotting companion who was still gazing dreamily out of the window. “I mean,” he continued doggedly, determined to make his friend pay  attention to something other than the thoughts in his own head for once, “I didn’t think we were going to get out of there for a moment. Did you?”

Ford said nothing. He continued to stare vaguely out of the window at the confusing multitude of stars that  spread out before him like, well, like the infinity of creation itself.

Arthur tried again. “I mean,” he said, lifting up his voice a little, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Who knew the Earth was all this time being run by a pair of white mice who wanted to steal the ultimate question from my brain.”

“Mmmm,” muttered Ford, distracted by the twinkly lights of the stars beyond the window.

Arthur was about to open his mouth to make one more heroic effort for conversation, before a voice stopped him. It  was a voice so full of  chirpy good humour that both men sighed in unison as each felt their heart sink. It was a voice so unperturbed by anything at all, so supremely cheerful and unconcerned that both Arthur and Ford were tempted to shove their fingers in their ears.

“Hi guys,” the computer sang, its insanely delighted voice booming through every speaker on  board, “I’ve got to tell you something. My scanners have picked up two more life forms in  our vicinity, falling  through space and  precisely fifteen seconds from total isfixiation. How cool is that?”

The silence  following this pronouncement was so deep that  one could have heard a fly meet its death from half way across the galactic disc. Arthur looked at Ford. Ford looked back at Arthur for a long moment before turning his gaze to the window. Arthur seethed inwardly for a moment. It  was so bloody like Ford to be completely unconcerned by everything going on around him. He seemed to be completely unaware of the fact that whomever the computer’s scanners had picked up were in a similar situation to Ford and himself. The notion of this was surprising to say the least and bloody incredible at most.  

“What the hell has happened now?” demanded a voice, as Zaphod Beebelbrox entered the room looking very put out indeed.

“It seems we have two more unsuspecting space travellers,” Trillian commented dryly, moving  swiftly across to the main consoles and parking her arse in a seat. She glanced at the  vision screens for a moment as if lost in thought. She shook  herself mentally and applied herself once more to the immensely complicated set of instruments that made up the improbability drive. “I wonder who the aliens are this time?”

Trillian’s question was indeed a rather knotty one to  say the least. This same question was racing through the minds of the other people sitting on the bridge, but none of them could have given an answer that would come  anywhere close to the truth. Improbability is a funny thing, and as a result, nobody either on board the Heart of Gold or elsewhere could have predicted that two unsuspecting people would be falling off the edge of a world never before visited by any space faring species, a world  that was  carried on the backs of four giant elephants that was in turn carried on the back of a giant turtle. How  improbable would that be?

Rincewind fell off the  edge of the world with about as  much grace as a cow falling off a trampoline, mouth open in silent terror. Beside him, Twoflower was motionless, face fixed with his usual expression of silent bemusement. The tumbling motion of the little craft was making Rincewind feel decidedly ill and he dearly wished that he  hadn’t been so willing to take up Twoflower’s offer of payed work as his guide. This was all Twoflower’s  bloody fault. If he hadn’t arrived on that early sunny morning, the city wouldn’t have been burned to  the ground, and he wouldn’t at this moment be falling off the  edge of the world into  absolute  nothingness.

“Isn’t this exciting,” Twoflower asked with glee that was unseemly for a man who was about to die.

Rincewind glared at the little man sitting at his side.  “Don’t you realise what’s happening?” he asked in outrage, “we are falling off the edge of the world. We are, in short, about to die.”

Twoflower shrugged. “Can’t we do anything?”

Rincewind snarled a reply. “No. We can’t do anything.”

Twoflower mearly   shrugged again, a dreamy look coming across his face. “Well,” he said comfortingly, “there doesn’t seem to be any need to panick. Perhaps we’ll fall off the edge of this world and land on another one? How amazing would that be?  Perhaps we’ll meet  a new alien species.”

Rincewind thought it would be best  to  tell the tourist that it was very unlikely that they would survive this rimfall but  decided that he wouldn’t bother. Twoflower was an infuriatingly cheerful character at the best of times, and Rincewind didn’t think his  already frayed nerves would be able to withstand the total pig headed unwillingness to look facts in the face.

“Wow,” Twoflower  was ssaying now, in tones  so chipper and cheerful that Rincewind  would have wished to smack him in the face, “look at that. Can you see the colours?”

Indeed, Rincewind could see the colours. They were  terrible colours, scary colours. In the centre of that myriad of colours, Rincewind could see the tell-tale shimmer of octerine. Magic. He scowled. Great. An unstoppable force at the best of times, Rincewind knew that the presence of magic would only make this situation infinitely worse.

Rincewind closed his eyes, unwilling to see any more of what was rapidly transpiring before himself and the hapless tourist. He knew that he and Twoflower were going over the edge of the disc and he could do nothing about it. They were going to die. There was no doubt about it.  Rincewind was going to die. No one could survive the depths of space for very long. Even Rincewind knew that. Accepting this was proving harder and harder to do. Rincewind had  no desire to die and he sent a prayer to  whichever God would listen for his ordeal to be over. ‘please God,’ Rincewind said inside his head. ‘please God. Please God.’

As the small voyager   plummeted downwards and over the rim of the world,  Rincewind could have swarn that he could again see the looming spector of  Death lerking somewhere in the darkness. His very soul was screaming to be saved. He in no way wanted Death to take him to  the country where no man returned, but as the blackness of the universe consumed him,  Rincewind knew that he had little choice. He was a hopeless wizard to whom magic was  incomprehensible. He had not the skills to change  his situation.

Before he blacked out entirely, Rincewind’s final  thoughts were not of himsle, but of Twoflower. He found himself hoping  against hope that the tourist wouldn’t die, and he was surprised by the degree to which he  cared for the safety of Twoflower. The tourist from the Counterweight Continent  had done  nothing but agrivate him since he had arrived and yet as he plummeted ever downwards, Rincewind found himself feeling strangely  saddened by the idea that Twoflower may die. He didn’t want that to happen either.

Moments later however, Rincewind  didn’t have the capacity to  dwell upon anything, for the blackness of  unconsciousness consumed him.

Arthur  Dent and Ford Prefect watched with  bemusement as  Trillian and Zaphod argued over the prospect of picking up two more hitchhikers. Trillian was all for the rescue of the two alien beings and Zaphod was, as before, most reluctant to allow her to do so. But Trillian won the argument as she had before and minutes later, the computer reported in his usual chipper tone that the two aliens were safe on board the Heart of Gold.

“Will we get the paranoyed android to bring them up here?” Zaphod asked sulkily, collapsing into a seat and sighing heavily.

Ford stood up. “No, we’ll get them,” he told his semi cousin, nodding at Arthur who rose ad accompanied him towards the door of the bridge. “Back in a minute.”

The doors opened with their usual contented sigh   as Ford and Arthur  stepped through them and out into the gleaming  coridors. They walked quickly, wondering what calibre of alien beings they had  picked up this time. In a  galaxy as vast and cluttered with planets as theirs, one could incounter any  number of  strange creatures at any time of the day or night and not even Ford Prefect had met every species that now lived in the galaxy.

Rincewind opened his eyes and squinted through the  bright light that poked him hard in both eyes, wondering where the hell he had ended up. Was he dead? Was this heaven, or was it hell? Had Deth  fulfilled the task of taking his soul to  wherever people went when they died? He didn’t think so  somehow. This place seemed far too real to be anything as itherial as heaven.

A groan at his side caused Rincewind to turn and gape.  Twoflower was sitting at his side, rubbing his eyes and looking around. He was alive. Rincewind smiled at the knowledge of his and Twoflower’s apparent safety.  “Where are we?” the tourist asked, “is this another world?”

Rincewind couldn’t think of anything to say. He didn’t know the answer to Twoflower’s confused question, though  he didn’t think they had ended up on another world. Was magic at play here? He didn’t think that was the case.  

He sat up and tried his best to properly assess the situation. He could hear a  low hum and feel a slight vibration beneath his feet. An engine. That was what that  noise and vibration was. He thought that  he could now  make a guess at where they were. He wasn’t sure if it was a good guess, but any guess was better than nothing.

“I think we’ve landed on a space ship,” he said in auh, “I heard that some  worlds  do have the capability  of space travel, but I didn’t think I’d ever travel  on one.”

Twoflower was thunder struck. “Wow,”  he said in open surprise, “that really is the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard. Fancy that, us ending up on a space ship after falling off the edge of the disc. How  improbable is that? Amazing.”

Rincewind opened his mouth in an attempt to once again set Twoflower straight but before he could utter one word, a door opened across the room and two figures stepped inside. Both Twoflower and Rincewind looked up at the two humanoid beings standing before  them, neither sure of what to say.

“Are you going to come with us or not?” one  of the aliens – the taller of the two said in a  voice of slight impatience, “it’s not exactly warm down  here you know.”

Utterly  mystified, Rincewind clambered to his feet and looked the ginger haired being in the eye. “Who the hell are you?” he asked incredulously.

The ginger haired alien smiled in a slightly scary manner in Rincewind’s humble opinion and said, “Ford Prefect.”

It was an odd name.  Rincewind hadn’t ever heard the like of it before. He put out his hand and said in slight puzzlement, “I’m Rincewind. This is Twoflower, he’s a tourist you know.” He looked around at his surroundings, then back at Ford Prefect. “Where are we?” he asked.

“The Heart of Gold,” the alien replied.

That was not much of an explanation. “What’s that?” Rincewind asked.

Ford Prefect smiled. “Only the best space ship in the known universe,” he   said with a grin.

So they were indeed on a space ship. Rincewind had been right.  

“Where have you come from?” asked the second of the two beings,  ADDRESSING ANYONE   who CARED to listen.  

“The Disc world,” Rincewind said as he accompanied Ford Prefect and his worried looking companion out  into a long corridor painted a gleaming white. “Me and Twoflower here were dropped off the edge of the world and somehow, before we  both died a horrible death, we ended up here.” He looked around at the corridor and  muttered, “it must have been magic.”

“oh no,” Ford Prefect replied, “not magic. Everyone knows  there’s no such thing. Improbability. That’s what this is.” He turned to his companion. “We’ll have to remind Zaphod nevr to use that improbability drive again after this, Arthur. We’ve found too many strange things and I don’t think I can take any more of this strangeness.”

His companion laughed. “I thought you lived for  strangeness?” he asked with a grin, forcing a reluctant laugh from Ford as they lead Rincewind and  Twoflower towards  a set of doors at the far end of the corridor.

Rincewind followed   the two strange beings down the long corridor, wondering what was going on and wishing that someone would  for  God’s sake explain it to him.  Who were these people and what were they talking about? What was the Improbability drive and who in the  hell was Zaphod? If magic wasn’t involved in  this rather confusing situation, then what was at play here? He couldn’t answer any of these  befuddling questions and he glanced sideways at Twoflower, glad for once that his  friend looked untroubled by what was happening. Twoflower’s lack of concern for anything was rathr encouraging in this situation and as the doors opened onto a large room filled with strange  machines and oddly placed pot  plants, the slightly confused wizard took it  upon himself to  find comfort in his odd companion’s cheerfulness. What ever was going on, they would find out soon enough.


End file.
